I decided to take apart the xB to see what I had to work with for my stereo project.

First, removing the stereo is pretty easy. You can start by carefully prying on the passenger side of the stereo bezel with a flathead. Then just pull the bezel out horizontally. You should be left with this:

See that little trim piece at the bottom, that just comes off by pulling it straight out giving you access to the 2 10mm bolts at the bottom of the stereo.

Remove the 4 10mm bolts and you can pull the stereo out. This is what it looks like with all the harnesses connected to the back.

One of the plugs goes straight to the Sirius box. I imagine one of the plugs goes to the aux/Ipod input. Perhaps one for the steering wheel control and a couple more for power and speaker.

I found my Sirius box above the passenger side kick panel.

You can pry up the trim around the shifter to see what's underneath. You want to start by pulling the bottom edge up.

The blank on the trim can be used for anything

This is the sticker on top of the radio

The cupholder and top portion of the center console assembly just pull right up and off, no tools needed.

Remove the felt cover in the center console storage and you can find 2 more 10mm bolts. If you remove these and remove the bolt in the front, plus the 2 plastic rivets on the side, you can pull the center console up and out. But you have to contend with the aux and ipod connector harnesses. They are a bit tricky to figure out how to disconnect but everyone will find a way.

Plastic rivets on both sides

Ipod and aux connectors

The section below the shifter is fairly easy to remove. There are 4 screws under the shifter bezel and then you just pull it out horizontally. Putting it back in is a bit more difficult. Just make sure you get the 2 slots at the bottom slide into place before you push it back in.

I wish they put the ipod connection in a better spot too, with the big cable they have it's seems like it's going to be in the way.

the center console box is so ding dang small if they would have just flipped the mounting spot and put it inside it would have looked cleaner IMHO.

I'm thinking...what if you dropped the connecter in the center console down, permanantly attached the OEM adaperter under the console housing and just route the ipod dock connnector into the interior of your center console.

Too bad both ends are so big, the hole wlll need to be as big as well. You could notch a hole in the side of that bump out inside.

I'm thinking that might be a clean way to hid all the cables and keep you ipod out of site.

With my old xB I installed a hidden cigarette lighter outlet inside of the dash so I could power my gps.

The way you've disassembled the console like this did you fully remove the cigarette lighter? or was it still inside of the car?

I'm going to try to do the same thing I did before where I ran the power cable under the dash... unfortunately my trick with putting the power cable though the dash speaker grill won't work this time...

Anyways, thanks for taking so many pictures its really going to help me.

The power outlet/cigarette adapter was unplugged from that main center trim piece under the shifter. You just pull out that center section and unplug it from behind. The plug is attached to the trim piece.